Housing benefit will not be available to European Union migrants claiming jobseeker's allowance, the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has said in what he describes as the latest measure to end "benefit tourism". The ban will not apply to UK or Irish nationals.

In a joint initiative with the home secretary, Theresa May, he also confirmed that from April, EU migrants who have been in work but lose their job will be able to claim jobseeker's allowance for only six months.

"These are strong and fair measures to make sure British taxpayers don't subsidise people who want to do a bit of benefit tourism and come from one country to another just to get the better benefits system," he said.

"It's very simple: on our side of the fence this completes a process that we started at the beginning of the year which is that anyone coming in who is in the EEA [European Economic Area] and a migrant will not first of all be allowed to take benefits until they've established three months here as residency before and then after six months, if they haven't got a job, they'll be asked to leave.

"But in line with that we've said that from April 1 they won't be able to claim housing benefit unless they work, demonstrating they have been putting something back into the economy. So they'll no longer be able to claim housing benefit and they'll be banned from claiming unemployment benefit for up to three months and then limited to six months."

The measures had been outlined previously by the prime minister, but Downing Street is determined before the European elections to keep publicising its efforts to limit migration from the EU.

The shadow work and pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, said she would study the proposals, but had not seen the detail of what was being planned.

The Financial Times reported on Monday that Britain was struggling to find allies in the EU to back its call for an EU-wide tightening of the rules on migration within the region.

• This article was amended on 27 January 2014. The earlier version said migrants who have been in work but lose their job would not be able to claim jobseeker's allowance for six months.